
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
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Head of UK and Ireland

Head of Department

Director
Provenance
Dr. Patrick Woodcock
Gifted by the above to the present owner
Private Collection, U.K.
This work, in mixed media, is closely related to Winter Landscape, one of eight lithographic prints that Vaughan made during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It appears to be a trial run for the lithograph or an experimental attempt to resolve the composition, balance out the forms and work out how the coloured ink overlays could be managed. Making a collage, mixed media piece before producing his drawing on the lithographic stone seems to be Vaughan's usual method of working. A comparable example, using collage, gouache and lithographic pencil, exists for his lithograph Figure with Boat, made the same year (see Keith Vaughan: Figure and Landscape, Victoria Art Gallery, Bath, 2007, p.20). The original composition for this work derives from a small gouache, ink and wax crayon painting made a little earlier (see Keith Vaughan: Gouache, Drawings and Paintings, Osborne Samuel, 2011, p.30).
Vaughan's economical use of colour, blocked in forms and reduction of pictorial elements remind us that he began his career as a layout artist in an advertising agency and was familiar with printing processes and various graphic techniques.
The influence of Sutherland, who had encouraged and befriended Vaughan, perhaps, lingers here. However we can already see a greater move towards achieving a balance between abstraction and figuration, a distillation of the pictorial elements and a formal organization of the painted surface.
Patrick Woodcock was Vaughan's doctor and a long time friend, over the years the artist gave him or sold him many works.
We are grateful to Anthony Hepworth for his assistance in cataloguing this lot and to Gerard Hastings, author of Keith Vaughan: The Photographs (Pagham Press, 2013), for compiling the catalogue entry.